Editor’s Note: Additional recollections of Elisa Sparks’ contributions to the Woolf community and beyond were added to this post on 22 August, 2025.
I could never think of Virginia Woolf and flowers without thinking of Elisa Kay Sparks, who died Aug. 16 in Seattle, Washington.
Woolf, flowers and gardens were Elisa’s specialty, and she shared her passion and her knowledge with Woolf readers and scholars around the world — through her published writing, at conferences, through her many personal relationships, and via her social media accounts.
Elisa’s online “A Virginia Woolf Herbarium”
She created the online resource, A Virginia Woolf Herbarium, which was featured on Blogging Woolf and recognized by author Rebecca Solnit.
Scholar, teacher, writer, artist
A teacher of literature (contemporary, modern British, and science fiction) and women’s studies for 35 years at Clemson University, Elisa published articles on parks, gardens, and flowers in Virginia Woolf’s life and work as well as a number of pieces exploring connections between the works of Woolf and the American Modernist painter Georgia O’Keeffe.
She was under contract to write an inclusive study of Woolf’s use of flowers in her novels, and she had finished its 300 pages before she died.
She was also working on a series of woodcuts of the 98 flowers that appear in Woolf’s novels, a project she planned to present at the 36th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf in Oslo, Norway, in 2027.
The woodcut project is no surprise. For besides being a scholar and a writer, Elisa was also a printmaker, specializing in color-reduction woodblocks and encaustic monotype, as well as experimenting with other forms of art.
Tributes to Elisa from around the globe
A memorial service for Elisa is being planned. Meanwhile, tributes to Elisa were posted to the VWoolf Listserv and on her Facebook page and others. Please post yours as a comment below.
“She was, in the words of Shilo McGiff, `a wild and beautiful soul’ and she loved and cared for so many of us in the Woolf community for many, many years,” according to Anne Fernald in her post that shared the news of Elisa’s passing with the VWoolf Listserv.
Elisa Bolchi’s wall of artwork that includes a piece by Elisa Kay Sparks.
From Elisa Bolchi, co-editor of The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and Transnational Perspectives: “An artist never dies. In my house in Ferrara, @ekaysparks is on the wall behind my sofa, with a work titled ‘Talland House Ghosts’ that I bought at the Annual Woolf Conference at Fort Meyers, Florida. It’s colourful, poetical, inspiring, like she was. You’ll be missed, Elisa. But you’ll live with us, and make our memories colourful and bright. Because an artist never dies.”
From Helen Southworth: “She was funny, kind, engaged, and very creative. I never visited her Woolf World, but it captures nicely her adventurousness. I’m imagining her laughing and bustling about, cooking up a new project on her Woolf island surrounded by O’Keefe-inspired flowers!”
From Louisa Albani, artist and the publisher of Nightbird Press: “Elisa was a real supporter of my Virginia Woolf artworks and one of the artworks she purchased was of Virginia Woolf describing her mother standing by the purple passion flowers that grew on the balcony of Talland.”
Facebook post by Mine Özyurt Kılıç
From Mine Özyurt Kılıç of the Woolf Arts Archive: “Your earthly herbarium of human and non-human beings will miss you so much, dear Elisa Kay Sparks.”
From neighbor Annika Bowden: “Rest in peace, Elisa. Thank you so much for your friendship, kindness, and infectious positive attitude. Our little neighborhood is not the same without you and you are desperately missed by many of us.”
From Angeliki Spiropoulou: “Elisa was a prominent member of the Woolf community who has contributed original, insightful and sensitive work to Woolf studies, a kind, sparkling and inspiring academic, artist and friend. She will be missed by all who knew her.”
Elisa’s beloved dog
From Laura Cernat: “Elisa will be dearly missed. I wasn’t able to meet her in person either, but at the Woolf Salons she was a vibrant presence and an indispensable source of insights (and complete bibliographies on a variety of topics). I am glad that I got to know her, at least virtually, and that the Woolf Herbarium blog lives on as part of her legacy. So sad to hear about her passing.”
From Katherine Hill-Miller: “Like all of us, I am so sorry to hear of Elisa’s death. She was a bright light in the Woolf world, a woman who unfailingly welcomed, engaged, and supported others. It goes without saying that Elisa’s work on flowers and plants is an invaluable tool for all of us. But Elisa was, quite simply, a wonderfully loving woman. I miss her deeply. A light has gone out.”
From Diana Swanson: “Elisa’s Woolf scholarship is important, original, interesting, and often fun. I honor her for that. And I honor her for her art and her support of other artists. I honor her more, though, for something she may not have mentioned to many on the Woolf listserv. Some years ago, I shared with Elisa and a few others at a Woolf conference that I was searching out ways of supporting a girls boarding high school that I had visited in rural Kenya, a school founded by two Kenyan friends of mine to provide ‘an education good enough for the richest, open to the poorest.’ Sometime after that, Elisa came to me with an idea. In memory of her parents, both scientists, she offered to support the teaching of science at Jane Adeny Memorial School (JAMS). The result became ‘Sparks Lab,’ a science building in which, as of today, more than 350 Kenyan girls have studied biology, chemistry, and physics. Thanks to Elisa’s gift, many JAMS alums are now either studying for, or currently pursuing, careers in agriculture, medicine, and the sciences. One young woman is even now studying at the university in Illinois where I used to teach, researching crop plant diseases with the goal of helping to reduce the kind of hunger she herself experienced growing up. Elisa touched my heart, and transformed lives, with her care and compassion for people she never met but whose lives she could imagine and value.
From Anne Fernald: “She was ill with cancer, but, although her death came quickly, she was surrounded by friends and knew how much the many of us who could not be present with her in Seattle loved her. Before she died, she shared an incredibly cheerful and brave message about her dog, the flowers, the birds, and how she was letting herself be taken care of in her illness. I know that many of you will join me in grieving and celebrating the life of this wonderful woman.”
A blessing cast
Below is Elisa’s July 3 post on Facebook. And yes, she did cast a blessing to all who knew her.
